Chef Giacomo d'Alessandro's Secret: Sheep's Cream From Italy

Ralph Gardner Jr. Samples the Sweets at A'Putia in Brooklyn

Giacomo d'Alessandro, an Italian chef who is a partner in the Brooklyn café A'Putia, explains his process for making cannoli.
Natalie Keyssar for The Wall Street Journal

By

Ralph Gardner Jr.

March 26, 2014 9:50 p.m. ET

The cronut, I've noticed, has graduated from breakfast treat to metaphor. It has become a synonym for that brilliant idea destined to put you on the map and secure your place in the firmament—whether culinary or cultural—if only you can devise the right mix of ingredients and nail the packaging.

One of the newest contenders is cannoli. And not some sort of cannoli-croissant, cannoli-ice pop or cannoli-pretzel-tiramisu hybrid. No, it's cannoli as it's meant to be, cannoli as made in its birthplace: Palermo. At least that's according to Giacomo d'Alessandro, a Sicilian chef and partner in A'Putia, a Brooklyn café that opened three months ago.

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A cannoli
Natalie Keyssar for The Wall Street Journal

Mr. d'Alessandro claims it's all about the sheep's cream ricotta that he has flash frozen and sent over regularly from San Biagio Platani, a town 20 kilometers north of Agrigento. The cannolo, as individual cannoli are referred to, has a crisp shell, though his is fried in olive oil rather than some sort of generic shortening, making it darker. The shell's interior is then lined with chocolate and stuffed with the sheep's cream ricotta, which contains a mere 20% sugar.

Mr. d'Alessandro said he came upon the idea of introducing authentic Sicilian cannoli to the American market after touring some of Little Italy's better-known bakeries and leaving unimpressed. "I can't believe so soggy," he said in English that remains something of a work in progress. "Not really fresh."

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Cassata, a Sicilian cake
Natalie Keyssar for The Wall Street Journal

I've never been a big fan of cannoli, either, at least the Little Italy version. The shell is too sweet, the cream even sweeter and the chocolate bits floating in the ricotta stale and almost tasteless—at least I hope and assume that's chocolate.

Mr. d'Alessandro's cannoli, on the other hand, are far less sweet than their American counterparts. Indeed, they're a study in restraint—perhaps the only notes of overindulgence the powdered sugar (also imported from Italy) and caramelized orange peel used as decoration.

I discovered Mr. d'Alessandro and his desserts at a lunch last week thrown by Pier Paolo Celeste, the director of the Italian Trade Commission. The chef also makes a cassata, a lovely Sicilian cake (not to be confused with the Neapolitan ice cream that contains candied fruit) that also uses sheep's cream ricotta but that, unlike his cannoli, must be consumed sparingly lest you suffer sugar shock.

The luncheon's menu was put together by Francine Segan, a food historian and cookbook author. But Ms. Segan told me it was Mr. Celeste who brought Mr. d'Alessandro and his desserts to her attention.

I'm not sure of the connection between the two men, except that in a former life Mr. d'Alessandro used to be in the tourism business. Indeed, he confessed that leaving his wife and two children behind in Rome to open a bakery in Brooklyn and create a potentially paradigm-shifting cannoli constitutes something of a mid-life crisis.

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Empty cannoli shells
Natalie Keyssar for The Wall Street Journal

"When you do something crazy," he said as we stood in his Park Slope café's kitchen, "you really need to believe 100% in what you're doing."

The Italian Trade Commission luncheon started with a plate of Parmesan, mozzarella de bufala and pecorino together with homemade green tomato jam, sun-dried tomatoes and fried pumpkin slices. There was also an excellent focaccia from Salumeria Rosi and three types of olive oil for dipping supplied by Lochitello, a Sicilian producer.

That was followed by two kinds of pasta, one of them Bucatini Dome, which looked less like a main dish than like St. Peter's in Rome. But to my sweet tooth, it was Mr. d'Alessandro's cannoli and especially his cassata—which is made with marzipan, sheep's cream ricotta and sponge cake and topped with caramelized fruit—that I realized I'd been waiting for all along.

It reminded me of the birthday cakes of my youth from Cake Masters, a bakery on West 72nd Street where my brothers and I used to fight over the butter cream flowers. The cassata tastes like the icing without the cake.

If I have any doubts about Mr. d'Alessandro's chances for success, it's only that sheep's milk may not be for everyone. It tastes faintly of, well, sheep. On the other hand, when you bite into the cannolo—which may not quite evoke visions of an after-dinner passeggiata in a Sicilian hill town, but comes close enough—it feels as if your taste buds are patting you on your back for your culture and sophistication.

"When you buy a cupcake," Mr. d'Alessandro explained, "you try to find a perfect cupcake. It's almost the same regarding cannoli."

I'm also not sure it has the cronut's, or for that matter the cupcake's, breakout potential. Mostly because—and this may just be me—cannoli don't spark quite the dopamine response of either doughnuts or croissants, and certainly not of the two in tandem.

The cassata, on the other hand, while surely not for everybody, particularly those on restricted diets, is a sensory experience, even though I understand it's a typical dessert in Sicily. It's so rich that Mr. d'Alessandro's 9-inch, $35 cake can probably feed 10. The cannoli is priced at $5.

"It's a perfect combination between sweet and freshness," the baker said of the cassata. As you devour it, you feel simultaneously guilty and virtuous, which is a neat effect.

He's also considering offering gelo d'melone, a Sicilian summer pudding made with watermelon. But that might require importing Italian watermelons. American watermelon, he claimed, "tastes like nothing—just water."

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